Inter Europol No.43 takes pole position for the ELMS 4 Hours of Silverstone
Tom Dillmann has driven the No.43 Inter Europol Competition car to pole position ahead of the European Le Mans Series (ELMS) 4 Hours of Silverstone. Adrein Closmenil took second in the No.37 CLX Motorsport car, with Oliver Gray third in the No.29 Forestier car.
LMP2 Pro-Am pole was set by Steven Thomas in the No.14 TDS Racing car, while LMP3 will see the No.17 CLX start at the front, with the No.62 Qatari by Iron Lynx Mercedes on pole.
LMGT3
14 LMGT3s were set to take to the track for 15 minutes of qualifying, in the hands of their Bronze drivers. But a crash for the No.50 AF Corse Ferrari in FP1 yesterday meant they were withdrawn from the event.
As per usual, a few cars came in at the end of their first lap once the session got underway, either after their first or second laps.
The first quick time came from Francois Heriau in the No.59 Racing Spirit of Le Man (RSL) with a 2:01.324. The Frenchman getting out early in his first ELMS race this weekend, in the place of Anthony McIntosh.
Duncan Cameron in the No.55 Spirit of Race Ferrari beat him by two tenths, before Abdulla Ali Al-Khelaifi in the No.62 Mercedes went almost half a second clear. 2:00.643 now the time to beat. The Qatari driver was on it again on his next lap again, with two purple sectors. That turned out to be a 2:00.011.
His Mercedes stable-mate, Ameerh Naran in the No.63 Iron Lynx was the second man under the 2:01 barrier, although nine tenths off the sister car. Matt Kurzejski in the championship leading No.75 Porsche joined then, going briefly third.
Cameron found more time in the No.55, going second before Heriau came back into second. Blake McDonald in the No.33 TF Sport Corvette found time to go third, but those two were still almost four tenths off Al-Khelaifi.
At the end of the session, the tyres had gone and improvements were hard to come by. But McDonald found a couple of tenths, to jumpe ahead of Heriau for second place on the grid.
No one could catch the Mercedes at the front though. Al-Khelaifi took pole position commandingly, despite the rest of the field's best efforts. Second was McDonald, ahead of Heriau in the No.59. Then came the No.55 and No.57 Ferraris.
Then it was the No.63 Mercedes, No.75, No.54, No.77 Porsches, No.74 and No.51 Ferraris, No.23 McLaren and the No.86 Ferrari rounding out the field.
After the session, the No.59 Aston Martin of Heriau was given a three place grid drop for impeding Martin Berry in the No.77.
LMP3
After being disqualified from the victory in Spa, the No.5 Rinaldi Racing crew would have been looking for a trouble free weekend here. But at the beginning of the session, Mikkel Gaarde Pederson's left-hand side door was open when he was on track. He had to pit to get it shut again.
Meanwhile Louis Igleasias in the No.17 CLX Motorsport car was lighting the track purple eight minutes remaining he was on a 1:56.016.
Matteo Quintarelli in the No.8 Team Virage machine came through with a much quicker lap - 1:54.364, clear by 1.6 seconds.
Hugo Schwarze found time over him though, briefly holding provisional pole by a tenth. Iglesias came back with three purple sectors to go half a second clear of the rest. Both were improving on their next laps, Schwarze purple in sector 1, Iglesias purple in sector 2.
Both improved, but didn't change position. The gap remained just under three tenths of a second. On the next lap, both were up again, but this time Schwarze was purple in both of the first two sectors.
He did a 53.2 to go top, but Iglesias found time in the final sector to go less than a tenth quicker than that again. Neither found time on their final laps, leaving championship leaders Iglesias and CLX on pole position for the race. Schwarze gave the sole R-ACE GP Duqiene a front row start, with the No.8 of Quintareli in third.
Then
LMP2 Pro/Am
Another 15 minutes on the clock, and like the LMGT3s this session was only for the Bronze drivers. Out of these cars, only Giorgio Roda in the No.30 Duqiene car scrubbed a set of tyres, everyone else did the session without stopping.
Michael Jensen in the No.20 Algarve Pro Racing (APR) car was top early on with one of the first push laps. A 1:48.282 put him top with nine minutes remaining, exactly one second quicker than John Falb in the No.19 Rossa Racing by Virage entry.
Falb improve to the top on his next run with a 47.0, ahead of Steven Thomas in the No.14 TDS Racing machine, with Jensen dropping to third, two tenths off the top. Roda's first lap was two hundreths quicker than Falb, but Georgios Kolovos in the No.47 CLX car went half a second quicker than anyone else with six minutes left.
Jean Glorieux slotted into second in the No.3 DKR Engineering, two tenths off Kolovos, before Roda went top again by two tenths. Kolovos came back with three purple sectors though, once again putting half a second between himself and Roda.
Thomas found more time in the final two minutes, going top by two tenths of a second for TDS racing. PJ Hyett was also finding time in the No.99 AO Racing car, but he backed out of his lap in the middle sector.
Glorieaux in the DKR car had a spin in the final sector, but was quick to get it back moving and on his way for another lap. Hyett had a spin of his own at The Loop, he too kept it going.
That lap was good enough for Thomas to take pole position, ahead of Kolovos who put up a great fight for CLX. Then came the No.30 of Roda, the No.99 of Hyett and the No.20 of Jensen. Then was the No.3, No.19, No.7, No.83, No.88, No.21 the No.27 rounding out the grid.
LMP2
Finally it was the turn of the pro drivers in LMP2 to set the grid, and decide overall pole position. 15 more minutes for the drivers to get it done.
Oliver Gray was on the pace quickly, with a 1:43.498 in the first six minutes of the session. He was improving again, but decided to pit at the end of the lap for a fresh set of tyres.
Adrein Closmenil was the next to set a competitve time, three minutes after Gray. He went just under fourth tenths slower than Gray. Tom Dillmann in the No.43 Inter Europol came next, going two tenths quicker than Gray to go to the top, with Reshad De Gerus in the sister No.34 going to third.
Laurents Horr in the No.18 IDEC went to third, but De Gerus and Closmenil quickly displaced him and Gray to go second and third. Improvements didn't come on the penultimate laps, but some looked like they could on the final lap.
Gray went from fourth to third with a marginal improvement, but that was all the improvement that anyone could find on the final laps.
Dillmann took pole then for Inter Europol, but he was under investigation with Benjamin Hanley in the No.22 for an unsafe release. Closmenil was second, with Gray in third. De Gerus gave Inter Europol two cars in the top fourth, with Horr putting IDEC in the top five. Then came the No.25, No.28, No.10, No.24, No.22 and No.9.
Comments